Brilliant time saver for rent records - accounting!

[mrsaneperson]

I must admit i am not the most computer savvy person around - possibly like may others in these forums.

The other day my young son happened to notice me trawling through my online bank statements to find what rents one of my tenants had paid as there was an anomaly with her payments. I was trailing online over 2 years of banking account information. Carefully logging each payment down with pen and paper that i was able to find under the tenants name. Quite a time consuming task.
Son said why don't you do it this way and clicked the column where the rent figures lay this then made all deposits of rents cascade in numerical value .
Brilliant! I was able to simply copy and paste directly onto an email and show that tenant the rent payment anomaly within a few seconds. Instead of having to type out by hand all the tenants rent record!

This system will work particularly well where tenants are paying different weekly rents. I purposely do this already making sure none of my tenants are paying exactly the same rents as its then easier to locate the figures I'm looking for in the online statement.

Another way is to click the banking column where the payee name is. Sometimes though tenants make the payments under different variations of their name so it does not work quite as well as clicking the payments column.

Probably many of you know this information already - but for anyone who doesn't , hope this is a handy massive time saving tip for you.

[Perry]

Which bank and its relevant
Internet interface?

[Wayne]

Westpac kind of broke that in the new version of the online - used to be able to order by any of the columns.
Now you can search for names or bits of names but to change the order I pull out to a spreadsheet then order from there.

[mrsaneperson]

Which bank and its relevant
Internet interface?

This is with ANZ. I have a Freedom account with them.

It also works for the credit card statements online too. Making it easier to collate information for tax deduction expenses whether they be fuel , insurance etc

[Perry]

Like Wayne, I download a CSV output (after defining the
date range) into a spreadsheet and work from there.

As far as other processes go, I use quite different com-
puter software to sort deductible from non-deductible,
GST assessable and not, etc.

[BlueSky]

With regards to Westpac you can still use the old site. I think there is still given as an option unless they have removed it.

Does anyone have a spreadsheet where you can populate all you expenses etc that I can submit to my accountant as part of tax returns?

I know xero etc are good which I will subscribe once I have good cashflow.

[Anthonyacat]

With regards to Westpac you can still use the old site. I think there is still given as an option unless they have removed it.

Does anyone have a spreadsheet where you can populate all you expenses etc that I can submit to my accountant as part of tax returns?

I know xero etc are good which I will subscribe once I have good cashflow.

Surely your accountant can provide a template sheet? Theirs would be better than anyone else's, as it'll better match with their systems they're then going to plug the information into.

Xero really is great. But the idea of waiting until you have better cashflow doesn't quite make sense. Either it's worth the money to you or it's not. That isn't changed at all by how much cash your portfolio generates - unless you literally don't have any spare money for anything, I guess.

[Wayne]

With regards to Westpac you can still use the old site. I think there is still given as an option unless they have removed it.

Does anyone have a spreadsheet where you can populate all you expenses etc that I can submit to my accountant as part of tax returns?

I know xero etc are good which I will subscribe once I have good cashflow.

Yes you can use the old site.
I have given them feedback on the new site which is still being developed - we were a beta user.

As for an XLS - just work out what expenses the accountant needs to see as seperate and column for that.
Things like maintenance, legal, insurance, interest, P&I payments (to seperate P from P&I later), assests.
We add a few things I want to track seperately and bulk them up at the end of the year.
Easier to start with more columns than less and combine later if the extra information is of no use.

[Bryanw]

But what if the tenant pays only half he regular amount?

[mrsaneperson]

But what if the tenant pays only half he regular amount?

This will still show if you click the details column heading online . It will show all payments in succession made by that tenant.
The beauty about viewing the online statement rather than transferring the information over to your own spreadsheet as some commented is that the online version presents the most current and complete figures and its instantaneous. So no mucking around.